The use of damage control orthopaedics to minimize negative sequelae of surgery delay in elderly comorbid patients with hip fracture.

Hip surgeries count to the most frequent orthopaedic operations in older patients. Nonelective surgeries for hip fractures cause substantial economic burden because of high costs of medical treatment and high associated mortality. Surgery for hip fracture in the elderly comorbid patient still presents a challenge to orthopaedic surgeons. It is recommended that this surgery is performed within 48 hours after sustaining the hip fracture to decrease mortality. Yet the recommended early surgery (i.e. 48 hours after the incident) is not always feasible due to the frequent overall frailty of the patients or conditions of concomitant disease. The care of patients unfit for early surgery has been not adequately addressed in the literature. We have previously introduced an algorithm based on ASA-PS and P-POSSUM scores to stratify elderly comorbid patients for early vs delayed hip surgery, and used principles of Damage Control Orthopaedics to minimized negative sequelae of surgery delay (Dong C et al., PLoS One 2016). In this paper, we elaborate on Damage Control Orthopaedics and the proposed approach in the context of frequent comorbidities in the elderly orthopaedic patients. Further studies on this subject are urgently needed to establish international consensus on hip fracture surgery delayed due to overall patient frailty or extensive comorbidities.